The book is the Winner
of the 1997 Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the
Cause of Civil Liberties, presented by the Center for Independent Thought!

Publisher's Weekly review:
"...provides insights and facts not found in most newspaper or TV
coverage...[The authors] propose pertinent policy measures to compel law
enforcement to act lawfully." (Jan. 6, 1997.)

Summary of the Book

This is the definitive book on Waco. No More Wacos
uses the Waco disaster as the starting point for a comprehensive
investigation of the increased militarization, violence, and lawlessness
of federal law enforcement in the 1990s.

The book uses a narrative format to
examine the events at Waco. Each chapter focuses on a particular general
topic (e.g., the search warrant, the BATF raid, the April 19 tank
assault), and uses the topic to investigate not only what went wrong at
Waco, but also how Waco is illustrative of general problems with federal
law enforcement.

While the book is about Waco, dozens of
other cases of federal law enforcement abuse are brought into the
discussion, including a lengthy analysis of the Randy Weaver shooting, as
well as many lesser-known cases. As each problem is presented, the authors
propose specific solutions. Over the course of the book, more than one
hundred specific solutions are presented, ranging from the most
comprehensive (banning military involvement in domestic law enforcement)
to the technical (changes in the kind of statements that may be used in
search warrant applications).

The book concludes with a comprehensive
chapter of policy analysis which looks at institutional problems in the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the FBI; other federal agencies;
and the national media, and proposes additional remedies. These remedies
include reform of federal forfeiture laws, and removing federal law
enforcement from fields for which it has no Constitutional authorization.

The appendix is a comprehensive Federal
Law Enforcement Improvement Bill, which proposes specific statutory
language to address each one of solutions discussed in the book. A second
appendix provides the only summary available of the fifty-one days of
negotiations on a day-by-day, conversation-by-conversation basis. Finally,
there is comprehensive bibliography, which includes discussion and
evaluation of various sources. The bibliography includes not only the
usual types of citations, but also videos and Internet sites.

Meticulously documented, with over 2,000
endnotes, No More Wacos is scrupulously careful to analyze all
sides of the argument, and to discuss conflicting evidence.

What
is the central thesis of the book?

Waco did not come about either as a
result of a conspiracy or a fluke. Waco represents the worst-case scenario
of problems that are now pervasive in federal law enforcement, including
militarization, judicial rubberstamping of search warrant applications,
aggressive and unnecessarily violent arrest procedures, indifference to
religious beliefs, and politicized, incompetent media and congressional
investigation of abuses. Four years after the Waco disaster, this is the
book which explains how and why the tragedy occurred, and shows America
how to prevent future such tragedies by putting federal law enforcement
back under the rule of law.

Why
is this book different from all other Waco Books?

This is only book
which offers specific solutions for how to prevent another Waco, and how
to fix the general problem of which Waco is the visible tip of a very
large iceberg. Placing the Waco disaster in the context of the
increasingly militaristic, violent, lawless federal law enforcement, the
book offers numerous examples of other federal law enforcement abuses.
Every place in the book where a problem is found, a specific remedy is
proposed. The appendix to the book includes a proposed comprehensive
federal law enforcement reform bill, which can set the law enforcement
agenda in Congress for the remainder of the century.

No More Wacos is better
documented than more journalistic accounts; more balanced than books which
refuse to acknowledge David Koresh as anything worse than an innocent
victim; broader than the collections of scholarly essays concerned with
the nature of the Branch Davidians' religious beliefs and the need for
respect for freedom of religion (of course we do address this important
issue, in detail); and less partisan than Republican evaluations and
investigations.

The authors' backgrounds in law and
criminology help them lay out the evidence in an accessible, methodical
manner. Where the evidence is conflicting, they carefully analyze the pros
and cons of each possible explanation. The careful analysis of both sides
of the evidence stands in marked contrast to almost everything else ever
written about Waco, and makes the book especially valuable for library or
academic purposes.

The book contains the clearest, most
thorough explanation of topics such as:

why the arrest and search warrant were
flawed;

how ignoring the differences between
religious and ordinary criminal suspects led to a deadly BATF raid

how the FBI deceived the Attorney
General to justify an unnecessary and deadly chemical warfare assault
to end the siege on April 19th;

and how the Congressional investigators
and most of the national media failed to expose and correct the
problems manifested at Waco.

In contrast to every other Waco book,
No More Wacos offers specific solutions for every problem identified.

As the millennium approaches, there is a
very high risk for more "cult" activity, and more federal
confrontations with unconventional religious groups. This is the only Waco
book which looks forward, and sets forth a detailed agenda which can
ensure that there will never again be a Waco.

On-Line Reviews

Prologue.
The first chapter from No More Wacos. Discusses the Book of
Revelation, the history of the Branch Davidians and David Koresh up to
February 1993, and the Randy Weaver case. (This manuscript version differs
in some respects from the final published version.)

The
Ruby Ridge Prosecutions.
The decision of an Idaho
prosecutor to prosecute two people involved in the Ruby Ridge tragedy, and
the federal decision not to prosecute any
of the FBI and U.S. Marshal perpetrators. August 27, 1997. With Paul Blackman.

The
Unwarranted Warrant: The Waco Search Warrant and the Decline of the
Fourth Amendment.Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy. Includes (but in
a substantially revised format) material from chapters 2 and 6 of No
More Wacos, discussing how the BATF search warrant was obtained, and
why the low-quality search warrant--and others like it--are the inevitable
result of Supreme Court decisions weakening the Fourth Amendment. With Paul Blackman.

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